Retro Record Reviews

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Retro Record Reviews

It seems a large part of my teens and twenties were spent reading record reviews in magazines. Didn’t matter if I already had the album, was thinking about buying the album, or hated the band being reviewed, I wanted to read about them. Billy Joel might have said, “You can’t get the sound from a story in a magazine,” but that didn’t stop me trying.

Now it’s different. You can hear any song you want any time you want at the push of a button and make up your own mind without relying on some reviewer’s recommendation. So my efforts here are admittedly somewhat redundant and my methods outdated.

But you can’t hear everything and the older I get, the more homogenized newer music seems to become (there have actually been studies done that verify that this is, in fact, the case with modern Top 40), and there seem to be fewer and fewer places to get exposure to anything outside the mainstream.

I’ve been an avid record collector since the age of 12 and have amassed a very respectable library of CDs over the past 30 years. In December of 2018 I had the opportunity to purchase a lot of 2500 discs for $250. There was surprisingly little overlap with my existing collection.

“Hello, My Treacherous Friends” is a throwback to old-fashioned record reviews as I wend my way through these 2500 titles, along with the constant influx of discs that I buy new or at secondhand shops, quick synopses and first-take reactions to albums, most of which I’ve never heard before.

Record reviews were always a source of both comfort and discovery for me. I hope I can provide some of that same enjoyment for those who read my blog.